Anti-Discrimination Center Report Details County's Attempt to Maintain Status Quo NEW YORK, -- Six months after Westchester entered into a historic federal court Settlement Order to resolve a lawsuit brought by the Anti-Discrimination Center ("ADC"), the federal Monitor overseeing the case has rejected the County's inadequate plan for compliance. The rejection came hard on the heels of ADC's issuance of "Prescription for Failure," a report finding that Westchester is brazenly refusing to comply with critical elements of its Settlement Order obligations. The Monitor directed Westchester to review ADC's report, putting the County on notice that he was likely to request the County's response to at least some of the issues raised by "Prescription for Failure." The Monitor found a "lack of specificity with respect to accountability, timeframes and processes," and further found that the County's submission lacked "any concrete short- medium- or long-term strategies," for how the County plans to develop the affordable housing required by the Settlement Order to foster desegregation in Westchester. Noting the Settlement Order's requirement that the County use all means, including legal action, to overcome municipal resistance to the goals of the Settlement Order, the Monitor specified that a revised plan "should include a clear strategy for how the County will employ carrots and sticks to encourage compliance by municipal governments" (emphasis added). The Settlement Order in the case was entered on August 10, 2009, following court rulings that had found that Westchesterhad "utterly failed" to meet its "affirmatively furthering fair housing" ("AFFH") obligations throughout a six-year period, and that every single certification that Westchester had made during that period to the federal government asserting that the County had or would meet those obligations was "false or fraudulent." "Prescription for Failure" similarly found that Westchester's submission "constitute[s] neither planning nor implementation. The documents ignore or contradict several fundamental principles and requirements of the Settlement Order, and are clearly designed to maintain the status quo to the maximum extent possible." Among the key findings of ADC's report: Craig Gurian, ADC's Executive Director, stated: "The Monitor was obliged by the Settlement Order to reject Westchester's remarkably deficient submission, and we are glad that he did so. But vagueness, while a signal feature of Westchester's submission, was only one part of the problem. It is essential now that the Monitor, in consultation with HUD, require a real implementation plan that actually tries to accomplish the central goal of the Settlement Order: overcoming housing segregation. Westchester's submission was not a plan that could become acceptable with a few tweaks. The County must be required to submit a wholesale revision, one that is focused on confronting the exclusionary zoning that is an overwhelming impediment to fair housing choice throughout white Westchester." The full text of ADC's report is available at: http://www.antibiaslaw.com/prescription and the Monitor's report to the Court rejecting the plan and letter to County Executive Astorino are available at http://www.antibiaslaw.com/wfc. SOURCE Anti-Discrimination Center RELATED LINKS
http://www.antibiaslaw.com/wfc
http://www.antibiaslaw.com/prescription